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You sighed as you lent up against the cool metal wall of the Quinjet. You had been given a simple mission: collect a few H.Y.D.R.A files from an abandoned base. The one thing they forgot to mention was that the base was not abandoned at all, in fact it was swarming with H.Y.D.R.A agents. It was extremely lucky that they had sent the one and only Captain America along with you.
If it wasn’t for him you probably would have been dead ten times over, and you wouldn’t have gotten the H.Y.D.R.A files. So right now you were very happy that you had got out with just a couple scratches on your arms, torso and legs, but a bullet had pierced the edge of your calf, but fortunately had gone straight through.
“You okay?” a familiar deep voice sounded from behind you. You turned your head and came face to face with a pair of stunning blue eyes and the beautiful blond locks of Steve Rogers.
You nodded and smiled weakly but happily nonetheless. “Yeah, I’m fine. Didn’t get banged up to badly, so I think I’ll live,” he chucked as you pointed to your, slightly worse than grazed, calf. You and Steve were close. So close in fact that anyone who you didn’t hang out with a lot, or generally weren’t friends with, believed you were dating, but, surprisingly, to a lot of peoples disappointment you were not, instead very, very close friends. You talked to him about your problems, or what was bothering you and he would gladly listen, as you would when he talk about his own problems and dilemmas.
“Have I ever mentioned how much I hate H.Y.D.R.A,” your co-worker, and friend, Mathew Mackenzie growled as he plopped down in a seat attached to the wall adjacent to you.
“I think it has come up a few times,” you replied acting puzzled.
“Is there anything I can get for you guys?” your pilot, agent Terry, called from the cockpit.
“You could get me home faster, because I want to see my girlfriend,” Mathew called back to her, his face lighting up with the thought of his girlfriend.
You smiled, happy for your friend, but you began to wonder. Your brows furrowed as you thought silently for a few short moments.
“What about you Steve? You got a special girl in your life?” regretting what you what you had said soon after with the look he gave you. But his face softened and, weirdly, his cheeks tinted pink.
“Uh-no, I-uh, I don’t,” he replied quietly, scratching the back of his neck almost nervously.
You smiled shyly and shrugged, mouthing ‘sorry’ to him. He smiled just as shyly nodded sending back an ‘its fine’.
Moments of silence past until a bullet came tearing through the hull of the plane, plunging itself in Mathew’s head, killing him instantly, followed by an army of others. Steve grabbed his shield and protected you and himself with it, as bullets came charging at you. You covered your ears and looked up to catch a glimpse of Terry slumped over the controls.
Tears began to prick at your eyes until Steve pushed you out of the way behind a crate of supplies as he put the plane on auto-pilot as the bullets continued their onslaught into the almost completely destroyed hull. You bought your knees up to your chest and tried to calm yourself as you comprehended the situation that was unfolding before you. But your tranquillity was cut short as you were thrown backwards by an unseen force of an explosion. You braced yourself for impact of the wall, but instead of a wall you hit a gust of wind from outside the craft. As you began to fall, your fingers hooked on to a metal railing of some sort and you clung on for dear life. You were now dangling on the outside of a plane miles above the earth.
Steve looked over his shoulder as the ringing in his ears began to subside. He looked around the hull and then to the hole in the side. He raced to the edged and let a sigh of relief pass through his lips as he saw you hanging there. He was about to bend down and offer you a hand to help you up when a capsule came piercing through what was left of the hull and landed not too far from Steve.
Within seconds he realised what it was and quickly grabbed a parachute from under the chair next to him and tugged it on. He looked over the edge to make sure you were still there before climbing out and standing on a raining only a few feet from you.
“Y/N, we need to jump!” he called over the wind and you stared at in disbelief. “Let go, Y/n, I’ll be right behind you!”
You stared for a few more seconds before releasing the raining and letting yourself fall away from the aircraft with Steve right behind you, just as he said he’d be. Only about 3 seconds after Steve had jumped a bright orange flame engulfed the aircraft.
Steve pulled himself to you through the air and as soon as he was within arm’s length you clung to him tightly. Tears that were escaping your eyes were being swept up by the wind and toward the wreck that was once a plane.
How are we going to survive this? You thought miserably as Steve tightened his grip on you.
“Y/N, I need you to hold on really, really tight. It is very important that you don’t let go,” he said extremely serious, and you nodded following his orders and wrapping your arms under his, linking your fingers behind his back, and wrapping your legs around his knowing exactly what he was planning on doing.
You hid your face in the crook of his neck and nodded, signalling that you were ready. Steve looked down to try and see how close you were to the ground, but the low, black clouds prevented him from doing so. He trusted his gut that the two of you were far enough from the plane and close enough to the ground. His fingers wrapped around the cord and he tugged releasing the parachute.
The force of the parachute opening was so intense that it threw you off of Steve completely, causing you to plummet once again. But Steve grabbed your forearm and, with all the strength he could muster, pulled you back up to him.
You wrapped your arms around him once again and clung on for life. Things seemed to go eerily quiet as the two of you floated gently through the clouds, back down to earth.
As the clouds began to become less you took the chance to look over your shoulder to see how close you were to the ground. Your E/C eyes widened and a gasp escaped your lips as you see that you’re nowhere near the ground at all. You’re drifting down toward the tossing waves of the freezing ocean below.
“Steve, do you know what happens when an open parachute hits water?” you asked in a slightly innocent voice.
“No,” he replied quietly, staring down at the unsettled blue water.
“Let’s just say, you don’t want to find out,” you said quickly, unclipping the parachute buckle and allowing the two of you plummet down once again. When you both finally hit the water, it didn’t feel like hitting water at all, rather, a wall of ice.
You and Steve surfaced at the same time, both shivering at the sudden drop in temperature. You looked around you in the water before pointing out a shadow of land in the distance, just within swimming distance. You both began to power forward wanting to escape the dreadful cold the surrounding you.
You were making exceptionally good pace, just keeping up with Steve. You used the thought of getting to land to keep your mind off of the cold and your exhaustion. Steve stopped in the water for a moment, looking up at the sky, allowing you to catch up to him fully. As he looked up his face became even paler and his blue eyes filled with terror.
“Swim!” he yelled paddling frantically past you. You didn’t exactly know what you were swimming away from, but if it scared Steve than it’s worth being worried about.
Soon exhaustion began to consume you, every muscle in your body begging you to stop, but you couldn’t. But you did. You flipped yourself over onto your back, closed your eyes and tried to regain every breath you had lost.
Steve’s concerned voice rippled through your mind. You forced your eyes open and looked back at him, to see him pointing to the sky, yelling out something that you didn’t quite hear. You turned your head back to the sky and figured out what you had been swimming away from.
The Quinjet was plummeting down toward you in a great ball of fire. You paddled forward frantically, powering as fast as you could, but not fast enough. The nose of the jet hit where you had been floating moments ago. But just as you were beginning to think that you’d gotten out of harm’s way, the wing of the plane crashed down on your back forcing you under the water.
Steve cried out as your body disappeared under the water. He held his breath waiting, hoping, praying that you would resurface at any moment, but as moments passed he realised that something was wrong. He dived back into the water and swam down and around the sinking craft until he found your limp, lifeless body drifting down to the depts. He wrapped his arms under yours and pulled you up to the surface with him.
As soon as he had resurfaced he dragged you quickly and carefully toward the shore. When the water was shallow enough he resorted to just carrying you bridal style to the beach. He placed you carefully on the black pebbles and lent down watching if you were breathing. When he realised you weren’t he proceeded to initiate CPR.
After almost a minute you shot up and began to cough up all the water before falling back to the ground unconscious, but fortunately you were breathing this time.
•••
Your eyes fluttered open to a dimly lit rock room. You looked around and noticed that you were in a cave with a bright fire going just a few metres away with Steve sitting by it in a tight fitting regular shirt.
You looked down to find that he had wrapped you in the top part of his suit, which was quiet warm considering it was still quite damp. You tried to push yourself into a sitting position, but stopped as pain shot through you from your back.
You cried out slightly as the pain intensified when you tried to lower yourself back down. Within seconds Steve was at your side, carefully helping you sit against the cave wall.
“You’re alright,” he said quietly, wrapping the suit over shoulders again,” you took quite a hit to your back, but luckily it’s not broken.”
“Just really badly hurt,” you smiled weakly letting the heat from his suit consume you.
“Yeah, I contacted the others, they should be here sometime tomorrow,” he told you, as he slid down the wall and came to rest next you.
Silence echoed through the cave as you stared vacantly into the fire, watching as some of the sticks fell underneath the flames.
“Y/N,” Steve said a little louder than he wanted, but grabbed your attention nonetheless, “earlier when we were in the plane, you asked me a question about if I had I girlfriend.”
You nodded recalling the conversation in your head. “Well, what I said was true, I don’t have one. But there is this girl that I have been crazy about ever since I started working for S.H.I.E.L.D and I’ve never been able to stop thinking about her and it seemed the more I tried to ignore my feelings for her, they only seemed to grow. I’ve always wanted to ask her out but it was always so nerve wracking, but I think I have finally found the courage,” you felt tears prick your eyes. Though you and Steve were friends, you had always felt more toward him, but it hurt you that he was interested in another girl. You kept the tears from falling and nodded for him to continue.
“So, I-uh, I guess this is me saying…I love you, Y/N, and was wondering if you would want to be my girlfriend?” you blinked in astonishment and almost thought you’d heard him wrong. It dawned on you when he looked away embarrassed that you realised that you were taking a long time to reply.
“Yes!” you blurted out. Steve turned back to you his eyes alight with happiness and a slight smirk pulling at his lips.
He began to move his head down toward yours and you began to lean in, closing your eyes slowly. Your lips met his in a soft, warm kiss full of emotion. It wasn’t long but it was beautiful. You pulled away and stared into his welcoming blue eyes.
“I love you,” you said resting your head on his shoulder.
“I love you, too,” he said resting his head gently on top of yours allowing sleep to whisk you away.